1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information processing system and information processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a technique for extracting an image has been proposed in consideration objects and people seen in the image and positional relationships between them. Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-125274 (hereinafter, referred to as Document 1) of Picture Tel Corporation and a product named MP-Meister have been proposed as conventional techniques to access the image with a document used as a retrieval key or clue.
Document 1 displays thumbnails of a slide, which had been used in the conference, on positions of times provided on the timeline that shows the elapsed time of the conference, allowing the user to reproduce a moving image or video file in a time slot while the slide was being displayed. As in MP-Meister, the slide used in the conference is captured while the image of the conference is being recorded, and the slide is stored together with the time when the slide was displayed. This allows the user to select one from a list of the thumbnails of the slides that have been used in a conference and reproduce the moving image or video in the time slot while the slide was being displayed.
In the same manner, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 10-55391 (hereinafter, referred to as Document 2) describes a technique, by which the slide operation in the presentation is linked with the image in which the presentation is captured, so that the slide can be displayed in synchronization with the image reproduction or the synchronized image can be viewed by selecting the slide.
With the above-mentioned conventional techniques, however, it is possible to select the slide to view the image in synchronization with the slide. Nevertheless, the conference has to be specified, first. It is convenient to employ the above-mentioned conventional techniques, if the user has already determined in advance what on the conference the user like to view. However, for example, if the user likes to view the image relating to when the user delivered a presentation with the document stored on the user's personal computer, it is necessary to specify the conference. That is to say, the above-mentioned conventional techniques cannot meet the requirement that the user likes to view the slide or document in hand that has been displayed in the conference, although the user does not know in what conference the slide or document was used.
Additionally, as described heretofore, it is impossible to search the related image with the positional relationships of the objects and people on the real scene that are not included in the images, even with the use of the technique that extracts the similar image in consideration of objects and people seen in the image and positional relationships between them. To overcome the afore-described drawback, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-234722 (hereinafter, referred to as Document 3) describes a technique that searches the related image by the positional relationship of the objects and people on the real scene that are not included in the images. It is to be noted that, in the search technique described in Document 3, the image retrieval method is not completely carried out by using the positional relationships of the objects and people in a real space. For example, the document used in the conference as an object is not utilized as a retrieval key or clue.